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ArchiTECHs of Learning
Our latest blog posts…
Time, Talents, and Passion (Bob is back.)
After a long summer of uncertainty and hesitation about my career goals, as well as a few weeks of trying it out, I have requested to end my Administrative Internship and return to my previous position as Technology Coach…
…Let’s continue inspiring kids to use technology in productive ways, educating lifelong learners for success in the 21st century, and celebrating our manifold successes in opening doors to new and greater opportunities for learning in a digital world.
Using Chromebooks Doesn’t Have to Be a Gamble
As we get started with a new school year, teachers in classrooms across the district are dealing with a few dozen factors every class period that cause them anxiety. One of them is the mere act of signing out and opening up the Chromebook cart. But it doesn’t have to feel like a gamble every time students use technology. I thought I’d offer a few practical tips to help the use of Chromebooks in your classroom go more smoothly.
Tech Tip Tuesday: Using Google Keep for Badges
When your students meet a certain learning goal, what better way to acknowledge that than to issue them a badge? You can create badges in Google Drawings and then upload them to Google Keep, where you can then insert them into Slides or Docs and provide instant...
Get Your Moodle (iLearn) Course Ready for the New School Year
If you use Moodle (iLearn) with your classes, it probably still contains students and their data from the previous year. In order to get your course ready for the new school year, it is wise to reset your course. This simply means that you are unenrolling all of the...
Free Money for Your Classroom!
Please read the following about a new initiative we learned of while attending ISTE this year, the #TeachersAreProfessionals movement. This initiative is focused on provided teachers with $250 of FREE MONEY to use in their classroom ANY WAY THEY CHOOSE. No receipts,...
Moodle and Multiple Forms of Expression: Audio Recording Feature
One of the latest features added to iLearn (Moodle) is the ability for students to submit audio recordings within the Moodle Assignment module. There are no special tools needed other than the native microphone on a Chromebook or mobile device. With the simple click of a button, the audio recorder will open for students to begin recording up to 5 minutes of audio.
For the Love of Moodle
So this happened today: The excitement in Melanie Klein's text was palpable. Here is a teacher that found something that not only worked for her and her students, but made them both excited to learn! This marvelous tool is the workshop module in Moodle (iLearn). In...
7 out of 10
Giving kids what they need within the time frame in which they can actually (and will actually) do something with it is crucial to their learning. In this sense, I would propose that it’s far more important that our feedback be engaging than our “instruction”.
Google Forms for Parent Contact Records
To facilitate keeping good records of contacts I have made with parents, I created a Google Form that I, alone, have access to. This provides an interface on which I can quickly record a summary of my conversation, whom I contacted and the results. All of the information I enter feeds into a Google Sheet for my own documentation and for access at any point later on. The form is set to allow multiple entries. All I have to do is click the eye icon to see the entry interface.
Why blog when you could just use Google Classroom?
Dearborn Schools teachers are required to have and maintain a Wordpress blog ("iBlog") by posting each week. But juggling a blog and Google Classroom has been a serious concern for many teachers. In a lot of ways, teachers can be duplicating their work. The last thing...
Collaborative Maps, Asynchronous Learning, and Moodle Rubrics
Today, students in Mr. Apple’s class at Woodworth Middle school began their next tech-integrated project for 8th Grade U. S. History: A Civil War Google My Maps group activity. Google My Maps allows students to create and collaborate on a custom map in a familiar way since My Maps works just like a Google Doc or Google Slides presentation.
Movie-Making Kids: Viral Videos in the Making
It All Started with Student Choice In my co-teaching experience with Jennifer Hourani at Geer Park, our class is working its way through a HyperDoc unit in science that meets the NGSS standard of building a model to show the flow of energy in a food chain. Once the...
S.O.S. for Mahara Users
Getting Your Feet Wet For those who may be unfamiliar, Mahara is our ePortfolio program, and has become very popular among teachers across the district. Mahara is a clean, bright platform used to display videos, pictures, and text. It can fully integrate with Google...
From Lawn Chairs to Finish Lines
Potato Chips, a Lawn Chair, and the Nudging Neighbor On a beautiful spring day, my husband and I were sitting outside, watching the neighbors walk their dogs, ride their bikes, and generally enjoying the springtime air while getting in a little exercise. As I sat...
Hanging Out with the Tech Coaches: The Moodle Workshop
We were live on Google Hangouts on Air this morning discussing how to set up a Moodle Workshop module (view the recording below). Here’s a glimpse of what Amy and I talk about when we’re not meeting with teachers, and also a tutorial (in full or in part) on how to set up the Workshop module for your own class!
Reason #5: Moodle is Sustainable
Every endeavor into a new tool or strategy comes at the expense of something else that isn’t being pursued. Every endeavor involves a tradeoff as well as an investment. And if the investment is mostly financial (which is often the case for the most “user-friendly” tools), we can be in for a rude awakening when the funding dries up, the focus shifts, or the vision changes. People who invest time and energy in using a particular tool can find themselves in a quandary when it suddenly goes away or becomes a paid service. So much of what we try to do or use in education simply isn’t sustainable in any sense of the word.
Teaching is Hard
Over the past couple weeks, students in Ms. Angela Altomonte’s U. S. History class at Fordson have been working hard at preparing lessons to deliver to their peers on various topics. They learned valuable lessons about what it takes to be a teacher–and taught us a lesson about what students are really capable of when it comes to technology.
When Learning Emerges
“Every day is filled with uncertainty. Learning prepares you to deal with uncertainty. ‘Education’ prepares you to deal with certainty. …There is no certainty.” -Dr. Sugata Mitra
Hanging Technology on the Wall
“All this technology stuff is great! How do I hang it in the hall?”
Let me show you.
From Vestigial Video to Empowering Evaluation
The problem isn’t with videos. Sometimes the best way to learn about something is to watch a video about it. Sometimes a video is necessary to support other materials in learning about a particular topic. I tell people that half of what I’ve ever learned has been from YouTube. I’m kidding, of course, but it may not be that much of an overstatement. The problem, as always, is what students are doing with the video.
The Myth Of Magical Technology
Just this morning, I received an email from Kahoot reminding its users that they can administer “homework that corrects itself”. As a teacher, this is intriguing to me for many reasons. Giving self-corrected homework helps me avoid a little of the mundane practice of...
Technology for Lifelong Learning
Our Goal
The goal of instructional technology coaches is to help teachers become effective at using technology to provide the most technology-rich, positive learning environments possible. To this end, we believe effective teachers…
- Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity.
- Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments.
- Model digital age work and learning.
- Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility.
- Engage in professional growth and leadership.
from Standards for Teachers.
